27: Brian Jones (3 page)

Soon it was the turn of Keith Richards to move into 102 Edith Grove full-time: ‘I started to crash there sometimes, so as not to have to go home … Mick went through his first camp period, and started wandering around in a blue linen housecoat. He was into that kick for about six months. Brian and I used to take the piss out of him. I never consciously thought about leaving Dartford, but the minute I got out I had pretty strong instincts that I'd never go back. There was no way I was gonna stay there.'
[18]

Edith Grove was archetypal rented accommodation of the era: a gloomy brown-painted hallway, with linoleum-covered stairs and a communal toilet on the first-floor landing. Brian had taken over the double bed in the front room, which he shared with a mahogany radiogram (in time this would turn out to be a tactical error). In the rear bedroom of the flat were three single beds, one Mick's, one Keith's, and one for a young printer and music fan who was brought in to share the rent as fourth lodger in the eccentric household of 102 Edith Grove. His name was James Phelge, an apprentice lithograph printer who worked near Fulham Broadway.

‘I think Brian's much-talked-about isolation from the band started back in the Edith Grove days,' Phelge said later. ‘His choice to use the lounge as his own bedroom and not share with the others perhaps became the starting point for his estrangement. Nobody thought much of it at the time, but by not sharing the bedroom Brian was missing out on the closest parts of the friendships that developed. When you shared one room you talked to each other at all hours. You could lay awake for a couple of hours talking and joking as Keith, Mick and I would, and that seemed to make you closer. In missing this, Brian created a gap between himself and the others. It was as if somehow a small piece of his relationship with Mick and Keith always remained missing. Despite all that has been said and written about Brian no one would have wished him harm. When you are with someone sharing your last food and money to survive it makes a bond you never forget.'

Edith Grove stank of grime and the raging hormones of only just post-adolescent boys. A couple lived on the next floor who seemed to vaguely disapprove of the Stones. Keith, Brian and Phelge found out where they left their key while out at work, and would raid their flat for milk, bread and coffee.

Then Brian and Keith rigged up their microphone to the electric light flex in the centre of the living room, so that it hung down level with everyone's faces. Keith and Brian tried out Everly Brothers'-type harmonies together. ‘There was a time when Brian and I had decided that this R & B thing was an absolute flop,' said Keith. ‘We weren't getting away with it. Brian and I were gonna do an Everly Brothers thing, so we spent three or four days in the kitchen, rehearsing these terrible songs.'

While they were working together like this, Phelge noted that Mick seemed somewhat moody when he arrived home at the end of the day. ‘It's because he's feeling left out,' Brian explained. ‘He doesn't like it because I'm doing something with Keith. I knew it would upset him. Don't take any notice.'

Phelge was a jazz fan. One day he and the Stones' prospective new drummer, Charlie Watts, came back from an outing to Whiteley's in Bayswater where Phelge had picked up a copy of Miles Davis's
Walkin'
, which was reduced because it had lost its original sleeve. The card sleeve in which it came had had its details handwritten by none other than Brian.

Stuck at Edith Grove with Brian on their own most days, Keith soon experienced an epiphany: ‘I went out one morning and came back in the evening and Brian was blowing harp [harmonica], man. He's got it together. He's standing at the top of the stairs sayin', “Listen to this.” Whooooow. Whooow. All these blues notes comin' out. “I've learned how to do it. I've figured it out.” In one day.
[19]

‘He dropped the guitar. He still dug to play it and was still into it and played very well but the harp became his thing. He'd walk around all the time playing his harp.'

Yet there was a permanent kind of quiet desperation about both Brian and Keith. Still a student at the London School of Economics, Mick was far less insecure and more relaxed about the future than Brian and Keith – the Rollin' Stones was all they had, which wasn't the case for the singer.

Accordingly, Keith and Brian would play music every day. From the start, however, Keith claimed that Brian would try to play Mick and Keith off against each other. ‘Like when I was zonked out, taking the only pound I had in me pocket … Or he'd be completely in with me trying to work something against Mick.'

A friend of Brian's from Cheltenham was in the Territorial Army. With the eighty pounds he earned from his annual two-week military stint, he would come up to London to hang out with Brian. Brian proceeded to extract almost every penny of his pay from him, including the entire purchase price of a new guitar and a set of harmonicas. Out walking in the bitterly cold winter weather, Brian demanded the ‘friend' give Keith his sweater, at the same time as making him walk twenty paces behind them. (So how did Brian treat his enemies? wondered Keith.)

Bill Perks – who soon renamed himself Bill Wyman – had now joined the Rollin' Stones as bass player, following an audition on Friday 7 December 1962. When Dick Taylor announced he was giving up the group to study at the Royal College of Art, Bill had been recommended.

At the beginning of January Charlie Watts finally gave in and joined the group on drums. ‘Brian saw in Charlie … what he had in abundance and demanded from any musician: commitment and idealism,' said Bill. At this stage Mick Jagger was only the singer. It was still clearly Brian Jones's group, and he and Keith Richards worked out on guitar whichever songs the Stones would play.
[20]
‘The Stones took its musical stance entirely from Brian's passion for American rural blues music,' remembered Bill of that time. Brian's role as group leader even ran to being in charge of the finances, a situation that shortly would create considerable controversy.
[21]

‘Brian had a presence that was definitely electric,' said Bill Wyman, who became a close ally of the blond Stone. ‘Mick did too, in a strange way, but I always felt Mick's personality was more self-consciously constructed: I don't remember him having the same sort of magical aura in those early days. When we were playing blues, I don't think anybody took much notice of Mick. Much more important was what sound Brian was playing on the slide guitar and harmonica. Mick played harmonica too, but Brian was better, more imaginative.'

There was some sign of movement. Taken under the wing of Giorgio Gomelsky, who ran assorted venues, they had been offered a regular slot, a Sunday night residency, at the Station Hotel in Richmond in west London, a font of hipness. On the posters that Giorgio quickly had printed up, the group's name was misspelt ‘Rolling Stones'.

*

Errant consonants notwithstanding, the group decided to play their final show at the G Club in Ealing; they could afford to drop it, as the Station Hotel in Richmond paid just as much. At that final G Club date, Brian was confronted by the sight of a new girlfriend, Linda Lawrence, moving to dance in front of the stage, at the very moment that Pat Andrew walked in with Mark. From the stage Mick saw what was happening, and started chuckling while still singing. Keith caught the mood, and also began to laugh. Brian's eyes were downcast, however. But in fact neither of the girls knew who the other was, thereby saving Brian's bacon.

If any further proof was required of the mushrooming chic status of the Rolling Stones, it came on 21 April. A frisson ran through the audience at the Richmond Station Hotel as the crowd parted for first John Lennon, then the rest of the Beatles, who had been appearing on the
Thank Your Lucky Stars
television programme, filmed in neighbouring Twickenham. They stood and watched the set, which the Stones concluded with a lengthy version of ‘I'm Moving On'. The personable Liverpudlians were not at all standoffish and congratulated the Stones on their music. Afterwards, the Beatles went back to 102 Edith Grove with the Stones.

Astutely identifying who really motored the Beatles, Brian talked at length with Paul until 4 a.m., perhaps recognizing a like mind and drive. Seizing the moment, Brian and Keith were out of bed bright and early the next morning, heading off to meet the group at their hotel. The Beatles invited them to come and see their show at the Royal Albert Hall the following Thursday.

That day, 25 April, Mick, Keith and Brian caught the 31 bus up to the junction of Kensington Church Street and Kensington High Street and walked along to the Albert Hall on Kensington Gore. To get them into the building, the Beatles' road crew handed the three Stones guitars belonging to John, Paul and George, which they carried in through the back door of the hall. There they were mobbed by girls who thought they were the Beatles. Brian loved this – now he wanted to be a star.

Meeting the Beatles was psychologically important for the Stones. It also greatly impressed Andrew Loog Oldham, a 19-year-old slick and stylish hustler who had worked on publicity for ‘Love Me Do', the Beatles' first single. In partnership with Eric Easton, an old-school manager of such music acts as guitar maestro Bert Weedon, he offered to manage the Rolling Stones.

At Easton's offices off Baker Street on 6 May 1963, the Rolling Stones management contract with Oldham and Easton was signed by Brian Jones on behalf of the group for a term of three years. Mick and Keith waited nearby in one of London's ubiquitous Lyons corner houses. Before Brian signed, he nipped across the road to confer with his compadres. Back with Andrew Loog Oldham and Eric Easton, he made a deal on the side that he would be paid £5 a week more than the other members.

Radical changes were mooted by the group's new management team. Eric Easton had only become involved in the project because he wanted to drop Mick Jagger as vocalist, and get in a ‘proper' singer. At first Brian seemed perfectly amenable to this. According to Bill, there was dark plotting by Brian Jones about this potential change: Stu had overheard Brian telling Easton that Mick's voice was not strong and they should be careful if they needed him singing every night, and that, if necessary, they should get another singer. ‘As soon as the group started to become in any way successful, Brian smelled money,' said Bill. ‘He wanted to be a star. He was prepared to do anything that would make it happen and bring in money immediately, whereas Mick and Keith weren't into that.' Andrew Loog Oldham, however, was insistent that Mick should remain in the group.

Yet Stu's having overheard this was like a portent of his own doom. Andrew had no doubt who it was who should leave the group. The same night that Brian had signed the contract, the Rolling Stones played another live show – at Eel Pie Island just down the Thames from the Station Hotel, the second show of a weekly Wednesday night residency. That evening Andrew Loog Oldham announced to the rest of the group, in the absence of Stu, that Stu could no longer be a member of the Stones. The piano-player, with his prognathous jaw and paternal air, didn't ‘look right', he decreed. He instead suggested that Stu should play on the group's records and become their road manager. Stu did not know about this plot against him.

Brian and Keith returned together to Edith Grove from Eel Pie Island. Keith told Phelge that they would have to let Stu know that he was no longer a group member. When Stu finally came round to the flat two days later, he was told how his particular land lay. And he agreed to stay on as road manager. All along Brian had promised Stu that he was a sixth of the group. Stu, Phelge thought, seemed on the verge of tears. According to Bill Wyman, Stu now became extremely bitter towards Brian Jones: ‘. . . the tensions between group members began to increase.' ‘Brian's relationship with Mick blossomed temporarily, but there was an underlying feeling that ruthless determination was replacing idealism,' considered Bill. ‘I thought that the “sacking” was a strange way to repay Stu's incredible loyalty.'

*

In June, the Rolling Stones released their first single, a relatively tepid version of Chuck Berry's ‘Come On'. Plugging the record on their first
Thank Your Lucky Stars
television appearance, on 13 July 1963, the Rolling Stones had left the studio and charged the length of England to play at the Alcove Club in Middlesbrough, two hundred and fifty miles to the north. Also on the bill in that tough north-eastern city were the Hollies, a group from Manchester they had never previously heard of who were the headlining act. The immense harmonic competence of the Hollies unnerved Brian, as he explained on the Stones' return to Edith Grove, ready for their regular two Sunday shows in London. From now on the Stones worked on their harmonies. Hence the additions of the songs ‘Fortune Teller' and ‘Poison Ivy' to their sets, which Brian – still functioning as musical director – found worked well with the group singing various parts.

On 14 September, the band was given their second slot on
Thank Your Lucky Stars.
As the programme was by now recorded and broadcast from Birmingham, they were also able to fit in two gigs at separate venues in Britain's second city on the same day as they performed on the television show. After the shows Mick and Keith were the only group members to drive back in Andrew's car. ‘Who could realize, at this early stage, that the splitting of the group in that way would mark our future?' reflected Bill Wyman. ‘Keith and Mick were quite prepared to go along with anything Andrew said,' said Ian Stewart. ‘They fed off each other. We had very little contact with them in those days. Edicts would just be issued from the Oldham office.'

The days at 102 Edith Grove were virtually over. At the end of September 1963, the twelve-month lease on the flat ran out. Mick and Keith immediately moved into a place in Mapesbury Road, off Shoot-up Hill in Willesden but sufficiently near the more salubrious-sounding West Hampstead for Mick and Keith to claim that was the area in which they lived. Brian went to stay with Linda Lawrence at her parents' house in Windsor, twelve miles outside London. Her parents may have had cause to regret their free-thinking welcome: Brian's extraordinary fecundity clearly unabated, Linda was soon pregnant. A son, Julian Brian, would be born to Linda Lawrence on 23 July 1964.